Was taxation so heavy in the Russian transition that firms could not stay afloat? is the question that this paper aims to answer. It details the fiscal structure and uses data from a number of sources to calculate statutory tax rates faced by businesses in 1995. The results show that statutory...

The unusual rise and fall of non-monetary trade (NMT) in the Russian transition has been a subject of heated debates. Yet, this phenomenon is often viewed as a peculiarity that one cannot explain by economic considerations alone. In this paper we show that the resort to NMT was a rational,...

In the aftermath of sovereign default of August 1998, the hypothesis of virtual economy in Russia developed by Gaddy and Ickes has gained popularity. The hypothesis states that the country has not moved towards free-market economy but developed a system of implicit price subsidization similar to...

The paper looks into convergence of Russian institutions with those of other democratic, free-market-oriented states, and considers definitions of "normalcy" that incorporate the concepts of free market, democracy, and government efficiency.The author provides an estimate of Russia s...